Transcripts: Falcons vs. 49ers

Head coach Mike Smith and quarterback Matt Ryan speak to the media after Sunday's NFC Championship game at the Georgia Dome.

HEAD COACH MIKE SMITH

Opening statement:

“First thing I want to say is I’m very proud of the way our team played this afternoon. In a nutshell, we just didn’t make enough plays to win the ballgame. We played hard and had our chances for this to be a different outcome. We just came up short.”

On the final drive:

“On those last two plays of the ballgame the ball was tipped on the third down and we didn’t make the play on the fourth down. It was tough for everybody. Tough for our guys when there is finality with our season. We will bounce back. We just don’t feel real good right now.”

On the two turnovers:

“Coming out of the break it didn’t look like it was clean. I’m not going to talk specifically about it until I watch the tape. You guys got to watch it many times on the television. Then, we had the mishandled snap. Those two turnovers gave them the advantage in the turnover ratio. When you don’t win the turnover ratio in the playoffs, you’re not going to win the football game.”

QUARTERBACK MATT RYAN

On whether his left arm affected his play on the final drives:

“I was alright; good enough to go. We had two chances, we really did they just made good plays. On third down, they had the tipped ball and then on fourth down we tried to make something happen and we just couldn’t get it done. We fell a little bit short. I thought everybody battled really hard, we just didn’t make enough plays to get it done.”

On his fumble in the third quarter:

“It was just kind of a freak play. I took my eye off the ball for a quick second and it ended up on the ground. Against a good football team like that you can’t have those kinds of mistakes. You have to capitalize on those opportunities. We moved the ball really effectively all day we just had two chances where we were in positive territory and didn’t walk away with points. When you do that against a very good football team you’re not going to win.”

On being unable to score in the second half despite a productive first half:

“Going into it I felt like the way we played in the first half, we wanted to keep that momentum going in the second half. We moved the ball pretty effectively. The two times we had chances on the plus side of the field we turned the football over. You can’t do that. You can’t do that in these types of games. We could’ve used points on those drives.”